Telltale Signs That Linger
by luna-magic-2005
Summary: Yuya thinks about the past... In response to The Narrator's challenge.


Standard disclaimer applies.

In reply to The Narrator's Challenge.

...

Telltale Signs That Linger

By: Luna

_..._

_Yuya... don't cry... I'm here, okay? So... don't cry..._

Happiness.

Such a strange, strange word. There was a time when I was happy. There was a time when I would laugh and smile and joke without constraint; as if there was nothing holding me back. Like there is now.

Some people say that it's the mind that holds the body back, but for me, that isn't so. It's a him; it's a solid, unmoving, block of male that looms over me constantly nowadays, and though I tell myself that I want – that I _need_ that barricade to move out of my way, I find myself hesitating.

Kyoshiro killed my brother. I know the truth of it in the silence where _he_ speaks; where I ask a question and the only way I know it's true is because _he_ doesn't say anything at all. I laugh bitterly to myself as I glare at the back of his head. No, _he_ never lies to me. He just doesn't give me the answers I want when I ask him questions. Sometimes I feel like I hate him. Sometimes I want nothing more than to take that damn muramasa from him and beat him until he feels, at least to a small degree, the pain he creates in battle and the pain I feel when he kills someone, even if that someone was bad. But other times... It's... pleasant, at the same time.

When I caught him smiling at me – for real – after the first battle of Oda Nobunaga, and when he found my gun and expressed his concern for me in the only way he knew how. That was, quite rudely, the act of hitting me in the head with my own damn gun. I suppose I care for him, for what other excuse do I have for hesitating in killing Kyoshiro? They share the same body at the moment, and if I kill one... Kyo would be lost forever. And I...

I don't think I want that.

It's shocking, but I find it true. And, in a way, I owe Kyo for everything. Benitora stayed with us when he found out Kyo was (temporarily) staying with us "for good", and Okuni became the friend I always knew she could be to me, and Yukimura grew stronger while everybody else in his company followed us. I was never alone. All because of Kyo. I'm more grateful to that horrible killer than I am to anybody else, and only because he's the only reason I'm no longer alone. He's with me now, and so is everyone else.

_Yuya... don't cry..._

I am not a crier. Or, at least, I wasn't until _he_ came along. One wave of his dark aura, and I was shaking like the child I told myself I wasn't, crying in fear. I hated him for that. I hated him for unlocking hidden parts of me that I hadn't cared to acknowledge. And yet... I love him for it, too. Shocking, and it scares the shit out of me.

_I'm here, okay?_

It's only now that I actually have the time to think on it that I realize every time I ever cried, he said or did something to distract me. I guess he's like any other male, really, when it comes to women crying. That reassures me.

_So..._

He's not the gentlest of souls, but he helped me find the truth, after so many years of searching for it. My dear brother... he had died too soon, and for the most unreasonable of reasons. Kyoshiro left me all alone, and I was only twelve years old at the time. Sometimes, in those still small moments before dawn, I think about my brother and the times we spent together, just the two of us. Those were moments of heaven.

_Don't cry..._

I believe that, if Kyoshiro hadn't killed him, we would have been the most happiest of families. I would have laughed and smiled without the memory of what it had been like before, and I would have had him there beside me, protecting me and loving me. A family. Him and me, me and him. Brother and sister. But then, if he hadn't died, I never would have acquired the skills I do now, and I would never had been able to meet… _them_.

Sometimes, I don't want to remember, but I can't seem to forget. I don't want the memories of when I had my brother. I don't want the memories of him smiling at me. I don't want the memory of his blood on my face while I watched him lay in a bloody heap on the floor; an inanimate object that would no longer smile down at me.

_But memories linger like softly spoken dreams, before they fade away._


End file.
